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User blog:Kolmogrov142 Oracle Tuto X/The simulation universe hypothesis part 2
Welcome to part two of my series of blog posts on the simulated universe hypothesis! As promised in part one I will be focusing on that strange concept known as virtual reality. To start off with we need to establish a rigorous definition of virtual reality. Virtual reality or VR is a computer-generated scenario that simulates a realistic experience. With that definition in mind, we can now start to think of the technology involved in VR. In VR the physical senses and bodily movements of the participants are replaced with electrical signals which convert the actions of the participant in the real world into actions in the digital world. When a person in the real world moves their arm their avatar in the digital or virtual world will also move their arm; thus virtual reality like art can be said to mimic reality through electronic rather than artistic means. In a basic VR system the virtual environment looks clunky and somewhat unfocused but in an advanced VR system the virtual environment is complex and lifelike; to lifelike in some cases. This, of course, leads us to the question of whether or not we are living in a computer simulation? Because we have yet to build a computer that can come close to simulating the real world to any acceptable degree this question will remain open for quite some time. However, supposing that we did have some kind of realistic VR system that could mimic the real world to quite a high what could we do? Well if we did have such a system then we could, in theory, simulate the whole world and maybe we are living in an ancestor simulation, created by our descendants in the very far future? But does such a system need to arise in the very far future can it under certain circumstances come about in the very near future? Indeed it could thank the rapid and unpredictable curve of technological acceleration. Take computers for instance in less than 80 years computers have progressed from ginormous room-sized calculating machines to personalised super advanced (in comparison to early computers) handheld devices that can fit in your pocket. Heck it's only been around 72 years since the first general purpose all electric computer came around in 1946 and only a decade or so since portable computers grew in popularity. Taking that number 72 into account we can see quite clearly that in only 72 years we've managed to create computers that would dwarf any of the computers they built after the war. Due to the accelerated progress in building more and more sophisticated computing devices it's only a matter of time before we have a fully working VR system that can accurately mimick the real world to a very high degree. When that happens it's only a matter of time before we are all uploaded to cyberspace to become slaves of the government! The next question arises in regards to how we go about uploading our minds? One method of uploading a mind to a computer is by scanning and mapping the apropriate functions of the biological human brain and then copying, transferring and storing them into a suitable state in the computer system. Even if the original brain was destroyed the simulated avatars would still continue on 'living' in some form or another regardless of if they have biological bodies or even bodies at all. Now in order to simulate the human brain you need a lot of computing power, a rigorous understanding of neuroscience and way to much money! Luckily for us their are experts who are rigorously working on the problem of how we simulate the brain using a computer. A brief overview of how the brain works. The human brain contains somethin in the order of 86 billion neurons, that's 11.3157894737 neurons per person on planet Earth. Each of these 86 billion neurons are connected or linked together by war of connectors (edges or bridges in geometrty) called axons (not to be confused with the Doctor Who villains) and dendrites. Signals at the junctions or synapses of these connections are transmitted by the release and reception of chemicals known as neurotransmitters. In scientific terms this network of neurons firing signals all around the brain is known as a neural net. According to sandberg and Bostrom in 2008 the time required to simulate the brain on an analogue network population is 0 years and the time required to simulate the brain down to the molecular level is 103 years. Therefore we need to wait at least 100 years before we can start uploading human minds into cyberspace and even there's always the issue of ethics. If mind uploading can allow you to live forever (or as close to it as possible) what's the point of living? Like the question previously asked in this blog post that question is far to hard to answer so I will leave it open for the reader to decide a suitable answer. In regards to digital immortality it may be possible in a few decades to completely disregard our biological shells and exist solely as digital ghosts living in a simulated environment. Given time we might be able to build a pocket universe to contain the hardware for maintaining the simulation thus ridding us of the need for physical stimuli. If the virtual avatar or digital ghost needed to do some explore in the physical universe they could upload them themselves into a variety of biological and technological devices of varying sizes. In order for different mental processes such as thoughts to not be restricted by things such as the speed of light a series of Lorentzian wormholes could be connected throughout the external body of the avatar in order for thinking to feel natural and unrigid. Using this network of Lorentzian wormholes information could be sent all throughout time and space in a sort of time-space email system. Over millions of years the future descendants of human in their virtual universe could grow to become so advanced that they would have no need of their physical hardware, becoming purely digital beings in one with their universe. They would be nothing short of gods, transcending biological life in all its forms whether that be in regards to intelligence or physical capabilities. A godlike avatar from the far future could form bodies out of space-time itself, control the relative positionings of subatomic particles and cause quantum effects to happen on macroscopic scales. They could resurrect the dead, alter the past, present and future without any worry of temporal paradoxes and they could move anywhere in time and space. They could travel reach their destination faster than the speed of light through Lorentzian wormholes, control reality on a quantum level thus allowing them to manipulate the very fabric of the universe itself. They could create universes, control entropy and destroy all life in the universe with a single thought. Their minds would become fully integrated into the universe becoming the universe itself; through time travel they could completely alter the history of the universe engineering themselves to become God's billions of years in the past. Why stop at the universe how about the multiverse? If the theory of cosmic inflation is correct which I believe it is then their is an infinite or at least very large multiverse out there of which our universe is but a singal atom. If our far future godlike digital selves could somehow spread themselves over this 11 dimensional multiverse (number of spatial dimensions recognised in string theory) they would become more than gods. At this point their would be practically no limit to what they could achieve existing in a real which is as far from removed from us as we are to an infitesimally small dot on a piece of paper. In part 3 I will look at higher dimensional beings and how they relate to the simulation hypothesis and the infinite nesting argument and its implications. Category:Blog posts